The '68 Charger's grille was undivided with hidden headlights and its round taillights were styled to look like exhaust pipes and the car looked fine. But for 1969 Dodge divided the front grille with a gray plastic centerpiece and redesigned the taillights into elongated hockey sticks. There are those who say the '68 was the best-looking Charger but, generally speaking, the consensus is that the '69 was the best-looking Charger ever made. The consensus is right.
Other changes to the 1969 Dodge Charger lineup were for both good and ill. For no apparent reason, the 225-cubic-inch (3.7-liter) "slant six" was now offered in base Charger models. Producing a gross rated 145 hp, this engine was severely taxed by the enormous Charger's mass but Dodge found 500 buyers for the miserable combination anyhow. There was also a new Charger S/E model that added a dollop of luxury equipment atop the Charger R/T's sporting equipment.
However, the really special Chargers built during the '69 model year were made to do one thing: win stock car races. The Charger may have looked great, but it was an aerodynamic disaster. The deep set grille added lift to the front end while the tunneled-in rear window disrupted airflow in the back leading to high-speed instability. If the Charger was going to win in NASCAR, changes would have to be made.
Dodge's first attempt to turn the Charger into a race winner was the special "Charger 500" which used a flush-mounted front grille with exposed headlights and a modified rear window also mounted flush with the trailing edge of the roof. The Charger 500 was aerodynamically roughly equivalent to its main competition, the standard Ford Torino, but it was no match for the super-slick Ford Torino Talladega and hopeless on the longer tracks. So Dodge went forward one more step.
That next step was the radical Charger Daytona that, starting with the Charger 500's slicker body, added a special drooped fiberglass nose that extended the car's length to an absurd degree and a tall rear wing for downforce. There were also two small blisters added atop each front fender so that in racing trim, holes could be cut there and the racing rubber could poke through the top when the suspension fully crushed. The Charger Daytona was a bold and radical aerodynamic experiment that paid off on the racetrack. In fact a Charger Daytona driven by Buddy Baker was the first stock car to lap at more than 200 mph. Dodge only sold 503 Charger Daytonas — just enough to convince NASCAR to let it race.
More than 89,200 Chargers were built during the '69 model year — and though it tried, the production of The Dukes of Hazzard didn't destroy all of them.
